SAP Inc. is now giving its customers a boost to the cloud, extending their on-premise solutions to cloud applications.

Customers now have the option of moving some of their installed on-premise solutions to the cloud as part of a “hybrid solution,” SAP announced today. Instead of paying for an on-premise licence and maintenance fee, customers can now choose to pay for some of SAP’s services with a cloud subscription.

To make the transition a smooth one, SAP also has support services availble like SAP MaxAttention and SAP ActiveEmbedded, which help customers build and run their own solutions, assembly line-style.

“Companies are building effectively hybrid business models based on cloud and on-premise,” said Josh Greenbaum, an industry analyst and spokesman for SAP, speaking in a video released to explain the new push to cloud. “As much as [companies] would like to be all one or all the other, the hybrid model is really what’s becoming more and more dominant.

“It’s not saying everything is cloud, not everything is going to be new and different. Really SAP is saying is that this is going to be a complex marketplace, customers are going to need a lot of options … it also acknowledges that this is a transitional point in the market, we’re moving in different directions simultaneously and customers need a lot of flexibility.”

The Germany-based company serves about 250,000 customers, providing business to business solutions in asset management, finance, human resources, IT, manufacturing, marketing, and several other lines of business.

Earlier this summer, Adobe Systems Inc. also announced it was making the jump to the cloud, abandoning its Creative Suite program in favour of promoting the Creative Cloud, a subscription product. The cloud offering featured all of Adobe’s tools and services, including crowd favourites like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.

Watch Josh Greenbaum comment on SAP’s move to the cloud in the video below:

Candice is a graduate of Carleton University and has worked in several newsrooms as a freelance reporter and intern, including the Edmonton Journal, the Ottawa Citizen, the Globe and Mail, and the Windsor Star. Candice is a dog lover and a coffee drinker.